Author year

Appraisal of: Gorring H, Divall P, Gardner S, Gray A, McLaren A, Snell L, et al. NHS librarians collaborate to develop a search bank peer reviewing and sharing COVID-19 searches - an evaluation. Health Info Libr J 2022;09:09.

Reviewer(s):

Carol Lefebvre and Steven Duffy

Full Reference:

Gorring H, Divall P, Gardner S, Gray A, McLaren A, Snell L, et al. NHS librarians collaborate to develop a search bank peer reviewing and sharing COVID-19 searches - an evaluation. Health Info Libr J 2022;09:09.

Short description:

Responding to the COVID-19 pandemic, Health Education England (HEE) mobilized a group of expert searchers from NHS libraries in England to develop a platform for librarians to create a search bank by sharing peer reviewed search strategies and results on the Knowledge for Healthcare website. Structured interviews with the peer reviewers (n = 10) were conducted and these expert searchers worked in pairs to peer review submitted search strategies. Those interviewed felt that peer review benefited from a ‘buddy’ approach among expert searchers and that agreement about feedback provided to contributors was needed. They felt that peer review could be challenging and would benefit from a more formal structure than they had adopted but that it was professionally rewarding.

Librarians using the search bank were asked if they would be interested in becoming a peer reviewer and what training they would require. Of the twenty respondents (54.1%) who would be interested, the main development needs were what to look for in a search and how to provide feedback. Respondents stated they would welcome working with another individual when peer reviewing and that feedback templates would help the process. The peer reviewers also identified providing effective feedback to be one of their training and development needs for fulfilling this role.

Limitations stated by the author(s):

A limitation of the study is that it came from a project which was developed very rapidly as a pragmatic response to an international disaster, and as such the evaluation carried out by practitioners was not pre-planned and there was no research protocol.

It was recognized that submitted searches, strategies and the peer review process could not be of systematic review standard and it was agreed that the role of the expert searchers was to review searches with a light touch.

Limitations stated by the reviewer(s):

In addition to the limitations noted above by the authors, it should be noted that structured interviews were conducted with a relatively small sample of peer reviewers (n = 10).

Study Type:

Single study

Related Chapters:

Peer review

Tags:

• Peer reviewing